drose: You're certainly correct about the dictionary definition of socialism. I respect that. We have a common language and ought to use it properly, however political movements often disregard technically correct meaning in favor of a good public relations label. Communism, for example is defined as a situation where the state has withered away altogether and government no longer exists. In that sense, the USSR was never a Communist society, far from it. The state controled everything. By the same measure, its hard to imagine that the People's Republic of China is really a Republic. Even in our own country, one hundred years ago the Democrats were the conservative party and Republicans defended the federal government as emphatically as they attack today. And remember that "the left" was concieved before Marx himself. The right/left distinctions in politics were born in the wake of the French revolution, which was about 50 years before the Communist Manifesto was written. Precise definitions are indespensable, but so is historical experience. David B MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
